He seems to have last logged out in Holy gear.
Hmmm all purples… 200-226 gear. Not too bad.. but we have flags on the play.
[YELLOW FLAG] He has no badge gear. But has a lot of drops out of the new 5-mans. I’m not sure why he wouldn’t have any badge gear. That just seems odd. There are a few obvious upgrades to his gear from badges. It’s possible his prot gear has gotten his badges.
[RED FLAG] He only has 3 enchants. Seriously? It’s nice purple gear and he hasn’t bothered to enchant it? I mean he doesn’t even have the cheap ass enchants.
[RED FLAG] He only has one tradeskill (mining) and that’s at a skill of 1. That’s a significant buff just left on the table and ignored.
[RED FLAG] He only has rare gems in his gear (blue con). At this point I can’t think of any reason someone who can run Prot wouldn’t have epic gems in everything.
[RED FLAG] I cruise over to the Armory and look him up. His toon has never even -heard- of the Hodir. He’s not even neutral with them. So he can’t even use the gimp shoulder enchants.

My conclusion:
He can’t be bothered to spend time doing the obvious things to become minimally raid viable so I can’t be bothered to whisper him back to even open the conversation about picking him up for our guild. I feel like I’ll have to dog him to gem/enchant his gear.. or bring consumables to the raid. Meh.. Even without inviting him to the guild he feels like he’s causing me work.

The moral of our story:
The armory and wow-heroes are like your toon’s resume. In the same way that you wouldn’t send out a resume with obvious spelling and grammar errors you need to look at the armory and wow-heroes of your toon. Look at them critically. If you were a raid leader, would you want your toon in their guild? You may have the most winning personality and the best attitude ever.. but initially they see your gear.. your reputations and your achievements.

Cross you Ts and dot your Is BEFORE you jump into /trade or contact a potential raiding guild.

@Supermonk
I have no problem with it being an alt.. but if he’s “lf raiding guild” and he’s really serious about it.. even if this -is- an alt he needs to put minimal effort into it. Not gemming/enchanting/taking a tradeskill is just lazy. I don’t want lazy in my “rading guild”

I agree that wow-heroes (my favorite gear site, although quickarmory is also good) and the armory are like your toons resume.
I run a raiding syndicate on my server, essentially an advanced form of pugging, with more than 50% the same people every week, and GDKP loot system.
When I’m slotting people for ICC25, I’m going to look first to see if you completed ICC10 or 25 before, but the next thing I’m going to look at is gearscore, and right after that, your hit, gems, and enchants.
People know they have no chance of getting into my raids if they are unenchanted, green gemmed, 400 hit, etc. If they are serious they even message me and tell me they logged out in their pve gear especially to be checked.

One small note, it doesn’t matter if there is no Hodir rep, as all the enchants are BoA now.
I must say, I don’t care as much about tradeskills, they aren’t necessary except possibly at hard modes, although they do demonstrate the right attitude.
My DK tank was able to tank Anub25 fine a week after hitting 80 without tradeskills, but full badge gear helped alot.

I agree. Main or alt, hard core or casual, there isn’t much to judge you beyond gear and achievements at first glance. It makes all the difference in the world if you spend the time/gold/emblems/BoA’s BEFORE you post “lf raiding guild”.

Not enhancing your gear, even lower tier gear, is worse than gemming Spirit (on a paladin). At least the Spirit-gemming paladin understands there are ways to improve his gear and taken a stab at it.